Only seven days to go now, in the Countdown to
Copenhagen - one week until 192 nations come together to try to
negotiate a new international climate treaty that will allow the world
to deal with the potentially catastrophic threat of global warming.

Most
world leaders, from US President Barack Obama down, will attend the
meeting in the Danish capital which begins on 7 December and lasts
until 19 December; it will be one of the largest international
gatherings ever seen, with about 15,000 delegates and diplomats working
behind the prime ministers and presidents who will make the final
decisions.

But there is another gathering
taking place in Copenhagen, running in parallel with the main
conference, and that is the coming together of environmental activists
from all over the world, who are flocking to Denmark to cheer the
conference on, as it were, and also to give it a few sharp prods - to
remind the presidents and the prime ministers doing the deciding that
the situation is serious and needs an adequate response.

There may be 10,000 of them. There may be 20,000.
There may be even 30,000. Their official focus will be Klimaforum09,
the alternative "people's summit" which will host speakers such as the
anti-globalisation activist Naomi Klein, the author and climate
campaigner George Monbiot and the radical Indian environmentalist
Vandana Shiva. "Klimaforum's aim is to provide an opportunity for the
public to enter into discussion," said its spokesman Richard Steed.
"We're going to be looking at radical solutions."

Plenty
of people will be offering them. Naomi Klein, the Canadian author whose
book No Logo became a key text for anti-globalisation campaigners,
contrasted Copenhagen with the "Battle of Seattle", the angry
confrontation with the authorities at the World Trade Organisation
conference in 1999, which she took part in.

This
time around, she believes, "it's really tricky for activists in terms
of figuring out how you interact with a summit like this. There's a
different dynamic [from Seattle], because the fact is that the people
in the streets overwhelmingly support the mission of the meeting in
Copenhagen. And, so, they're not saying 'no' to the idea of a climate
summit. In fact, they're saying 'yes'."

Friends
of the Earth International (FOE) have organised one of the major
actions during the conference, known as The Flood. Part of the Global
Day of Action on 12 December - the middle Saturday of the conference
when the city centre will become a carnival of parades - this will
consist of about 3,000 members of the public taking to the streets
dressed in blue. They will march towards the Bella Centre, where the
main climate conference is being held, after joining up with other
groups. "System Change, Not Climate Change" is the slogan for the less
formal actions being organised by Climate Justice Action (CJA), the
umbrella group for an international network that includes Climate Camp,
Focus on the Global South, and the Indian Social Action Forum.

The
organisations marching that day plan to convene outside the Bella
Centre to show the level of solidarity needed to cut carbon emissions
at an appropriate rate. As well as attempting to persuade governments
to commit to these targets, the demonstrators will also argue that
market-based ideas such as the trading of carbon emissions are merely
opportunities for companies to profit from pollution. Most of the
protesters reject the involvement of the World Bank in international
climate finance.

Exhibitions by members of
indigenous populations from Peru, the Philippines and the Arctic will
discuss the policies of developed governments, such as the idea of
carbon offsetting as a method to reduce carbon emissions. NGOs
including The Third World Network, Focus on the Global South and
Jubilee South will participate in the official conference and lobby
against the dangers of these proposals to local communities.

Crowds
are expected to gather in Copenhagen for the arrival of the high
delegates on 16 December. At 7pm, during "Earth Hour" the lights of the
city will be turned off, sending a message about the need for a
commitment to a global climate deal. On the same day, demonstrators
will attempt to enter the Bella Centre en masse, turning the debate
into the People's Assembly for Climate Justice.

"We'll
definitely be met with violence from the police," said UK-based
protester Isabel Jama. "CJA has a guideline that we'll only use our
bodies in the protest, and we're anticipating police tactics to be an
obstacle to get around, not to confront. However, this will be
different to UK protests where police don't use teargas, and we'll be
working with legal and medical teams on the day. Danish kids are rowdy
and the police use dispersal tactics there."

Danish
officials have taken a firm stance against activism in recent years,
and UK protestors are expecting to witness the type of resistance seen
in the dismantling of the "Ungdomshuset", a youth community centre run
by activists and musicians in the centre of Copenhagen. When police
emptied the building in March 2007, more than 400 people were arrested
and teargas was used against the crowds.

The
Danish government announced recently that they have turned warehouses
and gyms outside the city into temporary prisons, and a new law has
been hurried through parliament ahead of the summit to allow police to
arrest anyone who they suspect might breach the peace.

"Protests
have begun to combat these infringements of civil liberties, and whilst
there's an ideological perspective to their action their point is
informed by the environmental agenda that requires a constructive
outcome," said Danish student Seb Ross.

Who's who: The activists

Never Trust a Cop: anti-capitalist network which formed in April 2009 to mobilise against COP15 and link social struggles and climate activism.

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination: art-activist group from Bristol which is teaming up with Climate Camp, pictured, unleash civil disobedience on Reclaim Power day.

n La Via Campesina: movement which coordinates peasant organisations of small and middle-scale producers to search for sustainable agriculture.

Further

Whew. That was way too close for comfort. And yeah, the country's in a sorry state to have come to this. But not only does Doug Jones become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years; his win is a blunt rejection of all the hate-mongering, gay-bashing, race-baiting, sexual-assaulting, serial lying crap of losers Moore and Trump and Bannon and their ugly ilk. Forward to mid-terms. And once and for all, to Moore in all his evil: "Fuck you and the horse you (badly) rode in on."